{"id":24517,"date":"2023-09-08T20:28:46","date_gmt":"2023-09-09T03:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/?p=24517"},"modified":"2023-09-08T20:28:46","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T03:28:46","slug":"how-burning-man-became-uncool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/how-burning-man-became-uncool\/","title":{"rendered":"How Burning Man Became Uncool"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Ben Shapiro<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This week, the Burning Man festival \u2013 a convocation of large groups of men and women seeking sex, drugs, rock and roll, and other forms of hedonistic bliss \u2013 was flooded. It seems that a half inch of rain swamped the event, which takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, turning the dust to deep and sticky mud. The images of barely-clad neo-hippies struggling to walk through the muck spread like wildfire across the internet; even the White House was forced to acknowledge that it was monitoring the situation.<\/p>\n

For a huge swath of Americans, all of this was simply amusing. But the rise and mainstreaming of Burning Man is a far more interesting story than its pathetic possible demise. Burning Man was founded in 1986, when some hippie types gathered at the beach in San Francisco to burn a nine-foot-tall wooden man. Over time, the bonfire became larger and larger, until eventually it moved to Nevada, where it has been located ever since. Each year, 100,000 people head out to the middle of the desert to participate in events ranging from impromptu art exhibits to orgies and mass drug use.<\/p>\n

The fundamental principles of Burning Man are spelled out in co-founder Larry Harvey\u2019s 10 Principles, written in 2004. These principles \u2013 10 in number \u2013 construct a paganistic morality built around a bevy of mutually exclusive notions. For example, Burning Man is about \u201cradical inclusion \u2026 No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.\u201d But Burning Man is also \u201cdevoted to acts of gift giving.\u201d Unfortunately, without some form of mutuality, giving alone cannot for the basis of a functioning society, even temporarily. All of which means that Burning Man features social pressure to ostracize free-riders \u2013 a tragic violation of the radical inclusion principle.<\/p>\n

Burning Man values \u201cradical self-expression,\u201d which cannot be defined by anyone other \u201cthan the individual or a collaborating group.\u201d But such radical self-expression quickly comes into conflict with Burning Man\u2019s call for \u201ccivic responsibility,\u201d which surely encroaches on the unlimited right to self-expression. Burning Man also values \u201cimmediacy,\u201d which it calls \u201cthe most important touchstone of value in our culture.\u201d But Burning Man also calls for the community to \u201cclean up after ourselves,\u201d which runs directly counter to the promise of immediacy.<\/p>\n

All of this would be sheer countercultural nonsense, except for one perverse fact: the counterculture has now become the culture. This accounts for the fact that Burning Man now seems tired and played out, less transgressive than wearied. The age of Burning Man attendees has increased over the past decade (average age in 2013 was 32, compared to 37 just nine years later); so has the average income (in 2006, 14% of Burners listed their personal income at above $100,000, compared to 27.4% by 2016). Influencers now show up at Burning Man to sell Popeye\u2019s Spicy Chicken; Elon Musk and Paris Hilton and Mark Zuckerberg have shown up.<\/p>\n

And herein lies the problem for the broader American culture. Our elite class used to be inculcated in the same set of baseline values as \u201cnormal\u201d Americans: John D. Rockefeller was a regular churchgoer; so was Cornelius Vanderbilt. Today, our elites participate in drug-fueled binges in the desert \u2013 or at least wish to appear as though they do. Throughout the 1930s, even the poorest Americans aspired to dress well, wearing suits even on the breadlines. Today, even the richest Americans dress as though they shop at Salvation Army.<\/p>\n

Read more at: dailywire.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0\u00a0Ben Shapiro This week, the Burning Man festival \u2013 a convocation of large groups of men and women seeking sex, drugs, rock and roll, and other forms of hedonistic bliss \u2013 was flooded. It seems that a half inch of rain swamped the event, which takes place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, turning … Continue reading How Burning Man Became Uncool<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/watching-300x100-300x100-1.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fAkI-6nr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24518,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24517\/revisions\/24518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}